Ukraine-based HOLYWATER has closed a $22 million financing round led by Horizon Capital, with participation from US-based investors including Endeavor Catalyst and Wheelhouse. The financing follows an earlier investment from Fox Entertainment in October 2025. (check out our earlier interview with Anatolii Kasianov, co-founder and co-CEO of HOLYWATER) HOLYWATER is a technology company applying AI to content creation and distribution within the entertainment sector. Its portfolio includes several digital platforms across video and publishing, such as My Drama for vertical streaming, My Passion for digital books, My Muse for AI-assisted vertical series, and Freebits, an ad-supported streaming service offering free access to premium content. The company operates across multiple segments of the entertainment technology market. Its flagship app, My Drama, received the People’s Voice award for Best Streaming Service at the 2025 Webby Awards and recorded strong revenue growth during the year. HOLYWATER’s AI-powered app, My Muse, is also active within the AI streaming category. Commenting on the investment, co-founders and co-CEOs Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov said the round reflects continued momentum around premium short-form storytelling and its potential as a scalable content format. They noted that vertical series are increasingly being adopted as a long-term storytelling medium across multiple genres. The new funding will support HOLYWATER’s plans to further develop its mobile-focused vertical video streaming platform and expand its AI-driven content ecosystem. This includes exploring AI-supported formats such as comics and animation, as well as strengthening its IP development and distribution capabilities across additional content categories.

When you can, it’s always worth taking a look outside of your comfort zone to find the next big thing in tech. I’ve been interested in Armenia for a number of years, and now it seems the rest of the world is catching up. ​ I gained first-hand access by visiting Yerevan for the 20th annual Digitec conference. Unicorns, diaspora, and a global tech presence At the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, Armenia has a population of around 3.08 million, while an estimated seven million Armenians or more live outside the country — making its global diaspora one of its greatest strategic assets. The ecosystem is anchored by unicorns Picsart and ServiceTitan. This year Gecko Robotics founded by Armenian-American entrepreneur Jake Loosararian, raised a $125 million Series D round at a $1.25 billion valuation. Armenia is also home to a dense concentration of global technology R&D and engineering operations, including major centres run by NVIDIA, Synopsys, AMD, and the Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia. Multinational companies such as National Instruments, Oracle, VMware, Cisco, Mentor Graphics, TeamViewer, and D-Link maintain substantial engineering offices in the country. Since the mid-2010s, Armenia has built one of the most attractive policy environments for tech startups in the region. The government introduced tax exemptions and reduced income tax for IT companies and employees, then reinforced this with the creation of a dedicated Ministry of High-Tech Industry in 2018. By 2025, this framework had evolved into a comprehensive package of incentives, including preferential tax regimes, grant programmes, and support for hiring both local and foreign technical talent. Armenia’s race to build sovereign AI infrastructure Armenia opened its first supercomputer centre in 2024, and also acquired an NVIDIA supercomputer for use at the Yerevan State University (YSU). AI and advanced technologies. The year opened with a cooperation agreement with France’s Mistral AI to strengthen national AI infrastructure, followed by the launch of the AI Virtual Institute, in partnership with AWS and the Ministry of High-Tech Industry, to train and upskill local practitioners. In July, AI cloud company Firebird unveiled a vision for a $500 million public-private partnership with the Armenian government, with technical support from NVIDIA, which will fuel the development and growth of AI technologies in the country. Firebird plans to launch with thousands of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs in 2026 and will be designed with the ability to scale to over 100 megawatts of capacity. Last year also saw the launch of HyGPT, the first high-quality large language model (LLM) specifically designed for the Armenian language. The model is freely accessible online. The challenge of building Armenia’s global tech brand Addressing what Armenia’s global tech brand is today and what it is built on, Adele Tuulas, Director of Business Development at Digital Nation (Estonia), argues that while Armenia has many bright individual success stories, it still lacks a single, unified narrative that the world can immediately recognise. She sees this as critical in the context of branding as soft diplomacy. “A clear and credible tech brand becomes a strategic tool: it communicates what a nation stands for, what unique value it offers, and why it matters on the global stage, building trust, visibility, and lasting relevance.” Catherine Jurovsky, Senior Expert at Business France, believes Armenia possesses the core ingredients of a compelling tech brand, but has yet to achieve the level of international recognition required to turn those assets into a coherent and widely valued identity: “Today, Armenia has the ingredients of a tech brand, but not yet the international recognition that turns those ingredients into a coherent, valuable identity.” She offers the example of LeFrench Tech as a way forward: France built “La French Tech” by first creating a community, then empowering it globally. More than 100 hubs worldwide now act as volunteer ambassadors. “The key was not advertising budgets, but mobilising entrepreneurs, investors, and institutions around shared values and visibility. Armenia’s strong diaspora could play a similar ambassadorial role if equipped with a unified narrative.” From talent supplier to sovereign AI builder ​ One of the key themes at the conference was the urgency of articulating a coherent national AI strategy. ​ Yesayan asserts that a national vision backed by serious capital allows Armenia to move from being a supplier of engineers to becoming a creator of platforms, IP, and globally relevant AI systems. “The $500 million initiative is not about one data centre—it is about anchoring an ecosystem.” According to Yesayan, it means sovereign-grade compute, open to startups, universities, and industry; it means research funding that allows Armenian teams to train frontier-scale models rather than just consume them. “It means creating economic gravity so that global AI talent can work from Armenia, not just with Armenia. The aim is not to replicate Silicon Valley, but to build a model suited to Armenia’s scale, security needs, and regional role. Inherent to this is not only building startups but anchoring “strategic industries whose core IP is developed and retained in Armenia.” The challenges of doing business in Armenia While Armenia is known as a place of business, especially for international companies with a local presence, building locally from the get-go is not so easy.  Tigran Petrosyan, co-founder of SuperAnnotate, sees commercialisation rather than technology as the primary constraint: “Selling globally from Armenia requires mastering enterprise sales, long procurement cycles, and relationship-driven business development — capabilities that are more readily acquired in the US or Western Europe.” The counterbalance, he says, is resilience. "Armenian founders and engineers tend to be unusually persistent, an asset in an industry where progress depends on years of iteration and infrastructure building." Picsart co-founder Artavazd Mehrabyan sees the challenge not in talent but in proximity to global knowledge networks: “Once you are deeply connected to global research networks, geography becomes secondary.” Arto Minasyan is the founder and CEO of10Web, co-founder and President at Krisp, and Partner at investment firm Big Story VC. He contends that Seed funding of €500k–€1M is increasingly available locally. “Given Armenia’s cost structure, that can fund meaningful product development. However, scaling to €20M, €50M, or €100M rounds still requires access to global VC ecosystems. Large checks come from Silicon Valley, London, and increasingly from global growth funds.” Gender parity persists, but Armenia is building education as infrastructure Women in Armenia account for nearly 40 per cent of the tech workforce, but their voices were notably absent from the conference as the vast majority of speakers and founders were male. ​This surprised me, as it is usual to see women founders and investors representing smaller ecosystems such as Lithuania, Latvia, and Moldova. That said, Aremia is betting on the next generation of tech innovators through initiatives such as TUMO (he TUMO Center for Creative Technologies)  a free, extracurricular educational program for teens which offers young people access to areas such as programming, robotics, game development, animation, filmmaking, graphic design, music, and AI through a mix of self-paced digital learning, workshops, and project-based labs, all focused on building real skills and portfolios rather than grades. What makes TUMO Armenia particularly distinctive is its scale and national ambition. Through large urban hubs and a growing network of “TUMO Boxes” in smaller towns and rural communities, it aims to reach tens of thousands of students every week across the country, positioning creative technology education as a form of national infrastructure. It’s now a global network of learning centers and satellite hubs. ​ This integration with the wider ecosystem was inherent at the conference with TUMO students showcasing their projects at the front of the venue – a location that would be hot real estate for any commercial conference –, while university students were embedded as volunteers, giving them early, hands-on exposure to founders, engineers, and investors and helping to knit education, talent, and industry into a single pipeline. Armenia is no longer just a source of strong engineers, but is laying the groundwork to become a creator of platforms, IP, and globally relevant AI systems. With sovereign compute, a deep diaspora, and a national talent pipeline, the pieces are in place. The remaining challenge is coherence: turning these strengths into a clear, recognisable global tech identity that can carry Armenian innovation onto the world stage. Armenian startups to watch AIP Scientific AIP Scientific focuses on developing orthopaedic implant technologies dedicated to supporting the end-to-end process of customised implant production, including modelling, mechanical reliability evaluation, optimisation, and fabrication of implants with complex shapes.  They utilise digital 3D design, additive manufacturing (metal & resin 3D printing), 5-axis CNC milling, and more. AIP Scientific also pioneers a bio-degradable material called BioCer, which is currently in animal trials. Their services involve the production of custom maxillofacial, cranial, and orthopaedic implants made of titanium and BioCer. ​ Argus AI Argus AI is a medtech startup developing AI-powered mixed-reality tools to support surgeons in planning and performing complex operations. The company turns MRI and CT scans into interactive 3D models that can be explored in virtual or mixed reality, giving clinicians a far more intuitive view of a patient’s anatomy than traditional 2D imaging. Using AI for image segmentation and analysis, Argus AI helps identify critical structures and plan surgical paths, with applications in pre-operative planning, intra-operative guidance, and surgical training. The platform is designed “by surgeons for surgeons,” with a particular focus on high-precision fields such as neurosurgery, where spatial understanding and accuracy are critical. ​ BlueQubit BlueQubit aims to make quantum computing accessible and practical for researchers, developers, and enterprises. It provides a cloud-based Quantum Software-as-a-Service (QSaaS) platform that enables users to design, simulate, test, and run quantum algorithms without their own specialised quantum hardware. The platform integrates with real quantum processors from industry providers and high-fidelity GPU emulators, enabling customers to experiment, prototype, and deploy quantum computing workflows for applications such as optimisation, machine learning, and complex simulations. Havnly AI ​ Havnly AI is building an AI-powered platform that automates the matching of temporary/insurance-related housing placements and property management for insurance carriers and relocation specialists. Foldink Foldink is a biotech startup focused on 3D bioprinting and tissue engineering. The company develops and supplies bioinks — specialised biological “inks” used in 3D bioprinting — as well as bioprinters and related materials that biomedical researchers use to fabricate living tissues and biological structures in the lab. Its products include hydrogel and freeze-dried bioinks designed to simplify and standardise bioprinting processes for scientists working in regenerative medicine, drug discovery, and other advanced life sciences research areas. Wav.am Wav.am is an AI audio platform that provides text-to-speech and speech-to-text services. Users can type or upload Armenian text and generate natural-sounding spoken audio in different voices, or record/upload speech and have it automatically transcribed into text. The platform is designed to support everyday use cases such as content creation, accessibility, and language learning. It also enables the creation of longer-form audio such as audiobooks, with options to export and download the generated files.

Parloa, the German-founded startup which develops AI voice agents for call centre work, has raised $350 million in a Series D funding round, vaulting its valuation threefold to $3 billion in seven months. The round was led by existing investor General Catalyst, with other existing investors, including EQT Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Durable Capital Partners, and Mosaic Ventures, also participating. The Berlin startup’s Series D round follows seven months after it raised $120m at a $1bn valuation. Malte Kosub, CEO and co-founder, took to LinkedIn to describe his surprise at carrying out Parloa’s Series D so soon after its Series C. Kosub said: "I didn’t expect to be writing about our Series D already today - just seven months after our $1bn Series C. “Two funding rounds in less than a year reinforce what we are seeing every day. Agentic customer experience is no longer a nice-to-have. "It is becoming the new standard. We are incredibly fortunate to be building at one of the fastest-moving and most exciting moments in the history of software.” Parloa has now raised more than $560m in less than four years.  The startup says it will use the funds to expand globally, with a focus on the US and Europe, including offices scouted in San Francisco and Madrid, a localised team in London, and a recently established US HQ in Manhattan. Parloa, whose customer base includes Allianz, Booking.com and SAP, is playing in a competitive field, going up against several startups, including UK startup PolyAI. Parloa’s platform combines automated speech recognition and natural language understanding to enable companies to build automated dialogues for phone, chat, voice assistants and messenger – all in one place. The company claims its AI setup understands the same amount of words and contexts as a call centre agent.

Cyprus-based AINA has raised $1 million in seed funding from a private angel investor to expand its AI-driven hiring platform, which aims to improve hiring efficiency and reduce recruitment costs. As competition in the job market intensifies, employers are receiving growing volumes of AI-generated applications, many of which are poorly aligned with open roles. At the same time, recruiters increasingly rely on AI to create job descriptions, screen candidates, and conduct automated interviews, yet many qualified applicants still fail to reach human review. With hundreds of candidates often competing for the attention of a single recruiter, this growing dependence on automation has introduced new challenges around efficiency, quality, and cost. Candidates are also navigating a more complex hiring environment. Many, particularly younger job seekers, use AI tools for career guidance, but a significant number continue to struggle to progress effectively through the recruitment process. AINA positions itself as an integrated AI-driven hiring platform designed to address these challenges for both employers and candidates. The platform focuses on improving efficiency and decision-making by automating repetitive tasks, enabling more precise candidate screening, and delivering actionable insights. This allows hiring teams to shortlist candidates more quickly, manage interviews more effectively, and reduce the risk of poor-fit hires. For candidates, AINA offers an AI-based career coaching system that builds personalised career pathways, recommends roles aligned with individual profiles, and provides interview simulations to support preparation for real hiring conversations. According to founder and CEO Natallia Mikhnovets, AINA has facilitated more than 2,000 interviews and helped fill over 300 positions, with clients now able to recruit for specialised roles much faster, often within hours or a few days. The new funding will support continued development of AINA’s platform, including further enhancements to its AI-based recruiting, candidate screening, analytics, and career coaching capabilities.

While many venture capital funds are optimised for speed, scale, and short fund lifecycles, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) was built to address a structural gap in Germany’s innovation ecosystem. HTGF combines public mandate with private capital to back technically complex startups that require time, industrial grounding, and early conviction to succeed. I spoke to Dr Achim Plum (Managing Director) and Dr Tanja Emmerling (Partner) at HTGF to learn all about it.  From scientist to investor: Achim Plum’s path into venture Dr Achim Plum, one of the three managing directors, joined HTGF in January 2025, strengthening the firm’s life science industry expertisewithin management. He is a geneticist by training and began working in industry after completing his PhD. A defining strength of Plum’s profile is the combination of scientific depth with strategic business acumen.  Earlier in his career, Plum spent several years at Siemens in a specialised role focused on licensing research innovation. His role as Head of Diagnostics & BioScience Research contributed to strengthening the connection between Siemens’ research excellence and its core business, with the goal of translating innovation into long-term strategic value. His professional background includes roles at Epigenomics, Siemens, Curetis, Ares Genetics, SphingoTech, and InfanDx. He also brings a strong corporate finance track record, including involvement in two IPOs, and a clear understanding of financing dynamics across all stages of company development.  He’s since founded companies, scaled them, and also overseen liquidations — gaining first-hand experience of the full company lifecycle. He recalls:  “I’ve mostly been interested in smaller companies with disruptive ideas — diagnostics, medtech, life science tools, less classic pharma. Over the years, I’ve raised around €200 million, done two IPOs, and lots of follow-ons. At this stage, I thought changing perspectives and moving to the investor side would be interesting. And I don’t regret it.” Taking risk where it matters Tanja Emmerling has been at HTGF since 2014, after serving as Head of New Venture at a B2B publishing business with a value-investing family office.    “At some point, I felt that if you really want to change something, you need to be in the startup world — more risk-taking. So I switched to HTGF and started in the digital tech team. I built a portfolio of around 15 companies, most of which I’ve exited. The portfolio ranged from IT security to e-commerce, depending on what was popular at the time,” she recalled.  “In 2018, I helped build up the Berlin office, which has grown from a couple of people to about 17.” What makes HTGF different Most VC funds raise capital from limited partners, deploy it over a fixed fund lifetime, and are judged primarily on financial return. HTGF, by contrast, was created as a public–private partnership with a long-term mission to strengthen Germany’s — and Europe’s — innovation ecosystem. According to Plum, originally, when the fund started in 2005, Germany’s startup ecosystem was still in its early stages, and Seed financing had largely stalled. There were very few institutional investors willing to take the risk of backing tech founders at the idea stage. The fund was created to fix a funding gap. “Back then, it was seen as a public vehicle. The expectation was that the fund might lose money, 50 per cent research, 50 per cent loss. In reality, we’ve proven that early-stage investing can be both impactful and financially successful. We now have around 30 per cent private capital and 70 per cent public. There’s a misconception that public money limits us. It doesn’t. We can invest alone, set prices, and act like a normal VC. The only restriction is that we can’t match other public money.” Public mandate, private discipline HTGF’s capital comes from a mix of the German federal government, public institutions, and a large group of industrial partners. That structure gives HTGF a strategic and systemic role that goes beyond maximising short-term returns. While financial discipline matters, the fund is equally focused on technology transfer, industrial relevance, and helping research-driven startups cross the gap from lab to market. This also shapes how HTGF invests. It typically enters at the very earliest stages, often before a conventional VC would engage, backing companies that are still highly technical, capital-intensive, or long-cycle — particularly in life sciences, chemistry, industrial tech, climate tech, and deep tech more broadly. Many of these businesses require patient capital, strong operational support, and access to industrial networks rather than rapid scaling alone. Unlike many funds, HTGF is not tied to a single general partner model or a purely external-facing leadership structure. Each managing director is responsible for a specific investment domain and combines internal portfolio leadership with external ecosystem building — working closely with founders, corporates, research institutions, and later-stage investors. As well as anchor public investors like the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and KfW Capital, HTGF IV’s investor roster includes 45 companies from industry, including Adesso, Fraunhofer, Deutsche Bank, PwC and DHL, as well as SMEs and family offices.  HTGF’s ambition is to be financially successful — like any other VC — while keeping its political mandate in mind: investing early, taking risk, and crowding in private capital.  “Last year, for every euro we invested, about €14 came in from other investors, Plum asserts. “But we also need to be realistic. If we invest in something and no follow-on funding exists, that’s a problem. So we have to balance how far ahead of the market we go.” Emmerling agrees, asserting:   “We always have to think ahead of hype cycles. Topics come and go — blockchain, IoT, Industry 4.0, AI — but long-term you need a diverse portfolio that survives those shifts.”  The firm also thinks about follow-on funding: “If a topic isn’t attractive to later-stage investors, companies can struggle. So we have to balance technological conviction with market realities.” A Seed fund — with room to grow HTGF focuses on Seed investments, defined as tech companies younger than 3 years old.  Because HTGF specialises in Pre-Seed and Seed financing, most of its companies are very early-stage when it invests — so hitting billion-dollar valuations later is proportionally less common than for later-stage funds. Still, there have been notable exceptions, especially in life sciences: Cardior Pharmaceuticals, for example, reached a unicorn‑level outcome when Novo Nordisk agreed to acquire the company in a deal worth up to €1.025 billion. MYR is another example of an early HTGF success that later achieved a unicorn‑scale exit.  EGYM — a major standout in HTGF’s portfolio — officially became a unicorn in 2024 after raising around $200 million at a valuation. In addition, several HTGF companies raised major rounds in late 2025, including FMC, Neural Concept, and Tubulis, contributing to the €1.2 billion in follow‑on financing raised by the portfolio last year, with around 90% of that coming from private investors. HTGF’s portfolio: from space to biotech to cybersecurity Recent investments include: Marble Imaging: A Bremen Earth observation spacetech company developing a high-resolution satellite constellation and analytics tools to provide up-to-hourly data for defence, climate, and crisis response. Tubulis: A German biotech focused on next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) that secured a record-breaking €308 million Series C to advance its cancer therapy pipeline. TrustNXT:  A deep-tech spin-off developing cryptography-enhanced computer vision solutions to protect images and video from AI-driven manipulation and cyberattacks. SereneDB: A Berlin-based database startup building a unified search, analytics, and PostgreSQL engine to deliver real-time data insights without stitching together multiple tools.  RedMimicry: A cybersecurity startup offering realistic cyber-attack emulation to help organisations test and strengthen their defences against complex threats. nuuEnergy: A Munich-based energy startup combining digital planning and local craft installation to deliver high-quality heat pump solutions and simplify the energy transition for homeowners. Emerge Tech: A HRtech company founded by veteran founders from Babbel and WorkGenius that uses AI agents to greatly reduce recruitment costs and help SMEs enhance employer branding.  Acting as a bridge between startups and the Mittelstand A big part of HTGF's mandate is connecting startups with German industry.  “Many of our private LPs are Mittelstand companies,” shared Plum. “They often struggle to work with startups. We act as a bridge: they see our deal flow, co-invest, partner, and sometimes acquire portfolio companies.” Built for the long haul When asked how HTGF balances early-stage investing with the long innovation cycles typical of biotech and life sciences, the answer is patience backed by a broad portfolio. “We’re patient,” said Achim Plum. “Our first fund started in 2005, and we still hold around 30 companies from it. We don’t push for premature exits. Deep tech and biotech need longer cycles. Scientific breakthroughs, industrialisation and regulatory pathways don’t happen overnight. That’s why patience isn’t a luxury for us, it’s part of the model.” That long-term mindset is reflected in HTGF’s exit timelines. “On average, an exit takes around eight years.” Plum added. “Sometimes longer.” According to Dr Tanja Emmerling, HTGF’s ability to support long-cycle technologies is also a function of portfolio design. The fund invests at volume, allowing different technology sectors to mature at their own pace. “Our large portfolio helps,” Emmerling said. “We invest around 40 companies per year. Digital tech may move faster; life sciences take longer. But we can balance that.” Staying active in down markets While 2023 and 2024 reflected a downturn in funding across the sector, Emmerling revealed: “We never stopped investing — even during COVID. We stuck to our pace, which paid off. It also stabilises the market. When others pull back, we’re still active.” Plum agreed, asserting: “Consistency is a competitive advantage in downturns, and it creates opportunities. When others retreat, you can do great deals.” HTGF now has an Opportunity Fund that allows the team to invest up to €30 million into existing portfolio companies. The seed fund is capped at €8 million per company. “This helps us stay involved longer and avoid dilution,” explained Plum.  "We like the real challenges" Rather than chasing trends, HTGF uses a technology-first thesis investing in teams with deep technical insight and scalable innovation, across sectors such as industrial deeptech, life sciences and digital tech." Emmerling professed an interest in digital tech, proclaiming: “We like the real challenges, problems that are hard to solve, capital-intensive, and therefore difficult to copy.” “AI is everywhere, but we focus on concrete use cases: productivity tools, cybersecurity, health IT, legal and regulatory tech, and govtech.” At the risk of a massive understatement, Germany is very bureaucratic. Emmerling sees this as both a burden and an opportunity.   “Digitisation would change everything — even starting a company is still too slow here.” Category leaders, capital gaps, and Europe’s growth challenge For Plum, one structural weakness in Europe’s startup ecosystem is the tendency to exit too early — often before companies have a chance to become true category leaders. “We’d like to see more category leaders,” Plum said. “Too many exits happen too early.” A key driver, he argues, is the scarcity of late-stage capital in Europe. Without sufficient growth funding, startups are pushed toward early profitability at the expense of long-term scale. “Late-stage funding scarcity pushes companies toward early profitability, which kills growth,” he said. “In the US, companies grow aggressively while loss-making. Europe still struggles with that mindset.” In a significant shift for Germany’s venture funding landscape, the federal government has moved to integrate the DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF) into HTGF, creating a more unified public–private VC platform spanning seed to growth-stage deep tech. The move is intended to reduce fragmentation between early and later-stage funding and give founders a clearer capital pathway as they scale. For HTGF, it reinforces its role as a central pillar of Germany’s — and increasingly Europe’s — deep-tech financing infrastructure. According to Plum;“With the vision of a joint investment platform, we are creating the public-private VC structure that Germany and Europe need right now: continuous innovation financing – from technological idea to market leadership. Companies like FMC and Proxima Fusion already show how seamlessly HTGF and DTCF complement each other. Talent isn’t the bottleneck — scale is While Europe is often framed as facing a talent shortage, both Plum and Tanja Emmerling see the issue differently. For Emmerling, the challenge lies in building a stronger market for innovation itself. “We need European buyers willing to pay for innovation,” she said. Plum is even more direct: “Talent isn’t the problem. Scale capital is.” He argues that Europe’s fragmented approach to growth financing and market building continues to hold companies back. “We need to think European, not national.” “Europe needs entrepreneurs willing to take risks” Looking ahead, Plum believes Europe must become more comfortable with risk — and with failure — if it wants to produce globally competitive technology companies. “Europe needs entrepreneurs willing to take risks,” he said. “Germany excels at incremental innovation — now we need disruption.” Failure, he added, should be seen as part of that process rather than an endpoint. “Failure isn’t the end. Founders who fail learn fast and often come back stronger.” Emmerling shares the optimism, pointing less to missing ingredients than to missing links.“The ingredients are all here,” she said. “We just need better connections between them.”

TaleMonster Games, an Istanbul studio founded by former Peak Games veterans, has raised $30 million in Series A funding led by Arcadia Gaming Partners and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Point72 Ventures and General Catalyst. The new round comes roughly eight months after the company closed a $7 million seed round. The company’s first game, Match Valley, combines traditional puzzle mechanics with elements from hero and tower defence genres. The game has shown strong early performance, including high user engagement and extended average playtime. Irem Sümer, CEO and co-founder, said the team is focused on expanding what casual games can offer: Today’s players are far more experienced than before. Having played mobile games for years, they now seek greater depth in their games. We see a significant opportunity to meet this shift in expectations at scale. While the global casual gaming market serves a very large audience, meaningful differentiation, particularly in the puzzle segment, has become increasingly limited due to common design approaches. TaleMonster’s strategy is to address this by developing games that offer broad appeal while introducing deeper and more distinctive gameplay. The Istanbul-based studio was founded by developers who previously worked on globally recognised titles such as Toon Blast and Toy Blast at Peak Games, which was acquired by Zynga for $1.8 billion. Sümer added: We are a team brought together by a passion for product and a deep love for games. Our mission is to create games that surprise players, challenge them, and evolve alongside them. Commenting on the investment, Akın Babayiğit, Founder and Managing Partner of Arcadia Gaming Partners, said that while early-stage companies often perform strongly in only a few areas, TaleMonster shows strength across multiple dimensions, including monetisation and retention. The company plans to use the new funding to continue developing and expanding its game portfolio.

According to the Tech.eu 2025 Annual Report, European technology companies raised €72 billion in 2025, making it the second-strongest year of the past three for tech investment. With more than 3,740 deals completed, investor activity remained resilient across the ecosystem. The largest funding rounds of 2025 highlight a European tech ecosystem that is becoming more selective, strategic and infrastructure-driven, with investment flowing into technologies that support economic resilience, industrial competitiveness and long-term growth. The companies attracting the most capital reflect a wide range of growth strategies and financing structures. While traditional venture and equity rounds continued to dominate in AI, software and defence technology, many of the largest transactions took the form of debt financing, particularly across infrastructure, energy, mobility and financial services (excluding acquisition-specific debt facilities). Geographically, the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands emerged as key funding hubs, with strong contributions from the Nordics and Southern Europe. Below is a list of the 25 European tech companies with the highest funding totals in 2025. Amount raised in 2025: £2.3B CityFibre designs, builds, and operates one of the UK’s largest independent full-fibre broadband networks, providing gigabit-capable fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure to homes, businesses, public sector organisations, and broadband providers. The company raised £2.3 billion in financing to support the continued expansion of its full-fibre network across the UK, including new home and business connections and potential acquisitions of additional fibre network assets. Amount raised in 2025: £1.5B Propel Finance provides fast, flexible asset, vehicle, embedded and green finance solutions that help businesses access essential equipment and technology, combining digital tools with personalised service. It supports companies in financing growth-critical assets and improving cash flow. Propel Finance raised £1.5 billion to expand its lending capacity and support continued growth in SME financing. Amount raised in 2025: €1.7B Mistral AI develops advanced generative AI models and tools that help organisations build, customise, and deploy large language models, AI assistants, and autonomous agents for tasks like search, coding, automation, and data processing. Mistral AI raised €1.7 billion, more than doubling its valuation to around €11.7 billion, to accelerate research, expand computing infrastructure, and scale its AI platform globally. Amount raised in 2025: $1.53B Nscale builds and operates high-performance AI infrastructure, offering scalable GPU-powered cloud and data centre solutions for training, fine-tuning, and deploying AI workloads. The company focuses on vertically integrated compute, networking, and tools to support advanced AI development and large-scale deployment. The company raised approximately $1.53 billion across two rounds to expand its AI data centre capacity and support global infrastructure growth. Amount raised in 2025: €1.16B Ubisoft creates and publishes interactive video games and entertainment across console, PC, and online platforms, with well-known franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy’s, Just Dance, and Watch Dogs. The company focuses on delivering immersive gaming experiences and expanding its digital entertainment ecosystem for players worldwide. In 2025, the company raised €1.16 billion to strengthen its core game development operations and support long-term content production. Amount raised in 2025: € 1.1B Bending Spoons develops, acquires, and scales consumer software products across multiple digital categories. In 2025, the company raised approximately €1.1 billion across two corporate financing rounds to support the continued expansion of its product portfolio. Amount raised in 2025: € 1.05B EcoDataCenter designs, builds, and operates high-performance data centres with a focus on sustainability, energy efficiency, and support for AI and cloud workloads, using renewable energy and innovative cooling solutions. EcoDataCenter raised €1.05 billion over two rounds to expand capacity and meet growing demand for AI and cloud services. Amount raised in 2025: €1B FINN offers a flexible car subscription service with all-inclusive monthly plans that cover insurance, maintenance, taxes and delivery, letting users order and receive a vehicle through a fully digital process without long-term ownership commitments. Finn raised €1 billion to expand its vehicle fleet and support international market growth. Amount raised in 2025: €1B NXP Semiconductors designs, develops, and manufactures a broad range of high-performance semiconductor products, including microcontrollers, processors, sensors, and secure connectivity solutions used in automotive, industrial, IoT, mobile, and communications applications. Its technologies enable devices to connect, sense, and act intelligently across smart and embedded systems. NXP Semiconductors secured €1 billion to fund research, product development, and manufacturing expansion. Amount raised in 2025: $1B Grammarly offers an AI-powered writing assistant that helps users improve clarity, correctness, and tone across documents, emails, and messages, with tools for grammar, spelling, style, and communication enhancement used by individuals and teams. Grammarly has raised $1 billion in financing to scale sales and marketing and for strategic acquisitions to grow its customer base and extend the reach of its AI productivity platform. Amount raised in 2025: $1B Nebius provides scalable, full-stack AI cloud infrastructure with high-performance GPU clusters and tools to support the development, training and deployment of advanced machine learning and AI workloads on a secure, cost-optimised platform. Nebius Group raised $1 billion through the issuance of convertible notes to support ongoing business growth, including expanding compute capacity, extending its data centre footprint, and covering general corporate purposes. Amount raised in 2025: $1B Nokia develops advanced network infrastructure, connectivity solutions and digital technologies that enable secure, high-performance communication across fixed, mobile, and cloud networks, helping organisations meet modern connectivity needs. Nokia has secured a $1 billion equity investment from Nvidia as part of a strategic partnership focused on integrating AI into telecommunications networks and advancing data centre development. Amount raised in 2025: €810M Enpal offers integrated renewable energy solutions, including solar panel systems, energy storage, heat pumps, wallbox chargers, and flexible purchase or rental options to help households produce and manage clean energy with lower costs and greater independence. Enpal raised €810 million to expand installation capacity and scale its clean energy platform. Amount raised in 2025: €800M Your.World operates a platform that acquires, develops, and scales online services companies, offering web presence, cloud, productivity, security and digital transformation solutions to support business growth. It serves over a million customers through a network of brands, and a serial acquirer model focused on long-term value creation. Your.World raised €800 million to support acquisitions and strategic investments aimed at strengthening its market position and expanding its industry presence. Amount raised in 2025: $900M Oura Health develops the Oura Ring, a sleek smart wearable that continuously tracks sleep, activity, heart rate, and other biometric data to provide personalised health and wellness insights through its connected app. Oura raised over $900 million in a new funding round, valuing the company at approximately $11 billion. The capital will be used to accelerate AI and product development, expand global distribution, and support the creation of new health features. Amount raised in 2025: €600M Helsing develops AI-driven software and decision-support tools for defence and security applications, aiming to enhance operational insights, planning, and situational awareness for organisations using advanced machine intelligence. Helsing raised €600 million in a Series D funding round, increasing its valuation to approximately €12 billion. Amount raised in 2025: €600M IONITY operates a network of ultra-fast electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across major European routes, enabling high-power charging to support long-distance EV travel with shorter stop times. The company focuses on expanding reliable, renewable-energy powered charging infrastructure and solutions for both individual drivers and fleet operators. IONITY raised €600 million in a major financing round to support the expansion of its high-power EV charging network, with plans to significantly increase the number of charging points and broaden its energy supply coverage by 2030. Amount raised in 2025: £500M Capital on Tap provides small and medium-sized businesses with flexible credit solutions, including business credit cards and financing products, to help manage cash flow, support growth, and simplify access to working capital. Capital on Tap secured a £500 million funding package through the completion of its third asset-backed securitisation, backed by receivables from its business credit card portfolio. Amount raised in 2025: $600M Isomorphic Labs uses artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery and life sciences research, developing AI-driven platforms that help identify and design novel therapeutic candidates more efficiently. Isomorphic Labs raised $600 million in its first external funding round. The capital will be used to advance development of its next-generation AI drug design platform and support progress of its internal programs toward clinical development. Amount raised in 2025: €505M Bees & Bears offers a digital embedded-finance platform that lets installers and vendors provide flexible, real-time financing for renewable energy products like solar panels, batteries, and heat pumps, helping accelerate the adoption of sustainable technologies. In 2025, Bees & Bears raised €505 million, comprising a €500 million financing framework with a listed European bank and €5 million in seed funding. The capital is intended to support scaling operations, expansion into commercial and industrial segments, market entry across nearby European regions, workforce growth, and the financing of renewable energy installations, including solar, heat pumps, and battery systems. Amount raised in 2025: €500M Brevo provides an all-in-one customer communication and marketing platform that helps businesses manage email, SMS, chat, CRM and automation tools to engage customers, grow audiences, and streamline workflows. Brevo secured €500 million in funding, reaching unicorn valuation status. The investment will support additional acquisitions and continued expansion in the US market. Amount raised in 2025: €500M Elvy develops energy management and optimisation solutions that help businesses and utilities monitor, control, and reduce energy consumption using real-time data and intelligent automation to improve efficiency and lower costs. Elvy raised €500 million to accelerate the development and adoption of its next-generation home energy solutions and expand access to modern energy systems for homeowners. Amount raised in 2025: €470M Lovable offers an AI-powered no-code platform that enables users to build software applications and automate workflows using natural language, making app creation more accessible to non-developers. Lovable raised approximately €470 million across multiple funding rounds (including the most recent $330 million Series B round in December, valuing the company at $6.6 billion) to scale its AI-powered no-code platform, expand product capabilities, accelerate growth, and drive broader adoption of its software-building tools for non-developers. Amount raised in 2025: £400M Ferovinum provides specialised financing solutions for the wine and spirits industry, offering flexible credit and funding options that help producers, distributors, and retailers grow their businesses and optimise cash flow. Ferovinum secured a £400 million asset-backed securitisation facility with support from credit investors and investment banks. The funding will be used to expand its service offerings beyond the UK, including planned entry into the US, the EU, and Australia. Amount raised in 2025: €433M Electra builds and operates a network of ultra-fast electric vehicle charging stations, offering high-power chargers and a seamless app-based experience to help drivers recharge quickly and support wider EV adoption. Electra secured a green loan facility of up to €433 million to accelerate the deployment and expansion of its high-power EV charging infrastructure across Europe, strengthening its network and supporting growth toward its target of thousands of charging points by 2030.

Ukrainian-born edtech startup Headway Inc has raised Series A extension funding from Endeavor Catalyst. Headway Inc has closed the second tranche of its first external funding round, with Endeavor Catalyst participating and investing above its typical check size.  While financial terms were not disclosed, Endeavor Catalyst typically invests up to $2 million per company, according to its public disclosures. In this case, its investment in Headway Inc exceeded its usual allocation. The investment follows Headway Inc becoming the first Ukraine-born company selected into the Endeavor network in early 2025.  Endeavor Catalyst coinvests exclusively in companies founded by Endeavor entrepreneurs. Its portfolio includes 66 companies valued at over $1 billion. The fund leads globally in early-stage unicorn investments outside the US, China, and India. Headway Inc is a global technology company with over 160 million users that transforms lifelong learning through gamified and personalised digital products.  Check out our earlier interview with Anton Pavlovsky, Founder and CEO at Headway Inc. "Being backed by one of the world’s most active unicorn investors outside traditional tech hubs sends a strong signal about the quality of innovation emerging from Ukraine," says Anton Pavlovsky, founder and CEO of Headway Inc. "Our focus is on helping busy adults build a lasting habit of self-growth through personalised learning. We want to bring this experience to hundreds of millions more people." The investment in Headway Inc marks a defining moment for Endeavor Ukraine, strengthening the entire ecosystem and expanding the global network of investors supporting Ukrainian scale-ups. "When a fund with 60+ unicorns in its portfolio invests above its typical allocation in a Ukrainian-born company, it represents a pivotal moment not just for Headway Inc, but for our entire ecosystem. We've always known that exceptional entrepreneurial talent exists everywhere, and now we have the institutional backing to prove it,” says Sviatoslav Sviatnenko, Founding Managing Director at Endeavor Ukraine.   “We're honoured to help pave the path for the Ukrainian founders, making it easier for the next generation to raise capital and scale faster."

For decades, financial control was a function of accounting discipline. Budgets were set annually, spend was reviewed retrospectively, and finance teams relied on reports generated long after money had left the business. Technology supported the process, but it rarely defined it. That model no longer holds. As companies digitise their operations, financial control has quietly migrated from spreadsheets and policies into software architecture. Today, the biggest risks to financial visibility are not accounting errors but broken integrations, delayed data flows, and tools that were never designed to work together. The result is a fundamental shift in responsibility. Finance leaders are increasingly forced to think like technologists, while engineering teams are inheriting financial constraints they did not previously own. leaders are increasingly forced to think like technologists, while engineering teams are inheriting financial constraints they did not previously own. Financial control has moved into the stack In modern businesses, spend does not happen in one place. It is distributed across cloud infrastructure, advertising platforms, subscription software, contractor payments, and regional operations. Each system generates its own data, follows its own rules, and updates on its own schedule. From a finance perspective, this fragmentation creates a problem. Traditional controls were designed for centralised payment systems and predictable workflows. Today, money moves at the speed of APIs, not month-end close. A marketing team can deploy a new campaign in minutes. A product team can spin up infrastructure instantly. Without real-time visibility into how these systems interact, finance teams are left reconstructing reality after the fact. This is why financial control is no longer just a governance issue. It is an infrastructure challenge. Finance teams now manage systems, not just spend As organisations scale, finance teams are being pulled into decisions that look increasingly technical. Questions about spend limits turn into questions about permissions. Approval workflows depend on system logic rather than policy documents. Reconciliation hinges on whether platforms can exchange clean, consistent data. In practice, this means finance teams are now responsible for outcomes they do not fully control. A failed API connection can delay reporting. An incompatible data model can obscure compliance risks. Manual workarounds become permanent fixtures, introducing operational fragility into what should be core financial processes. The uncomfortable truth is that financial control without technical understanding is becoming impossible. If finance does not understand how data moves through the organisation, it cannot guarantee accuracy, compliance, or accountability. The CFO–CTO relationship is no longer optional This shift has implications for leadership structures. Historically, the CFO and CTO operated in parallel, intersecting occasionally on tooling decisions or security concerns. Today, their responsibilities are converging. Financial decisions increasingly depend on technical implementation. At the same time, engineering teams must account for regulatory, audit, and reporting requirements that were once handled downstream by finance. Consider a fast-growing European SaaS company operating across multiple markets. Its engineering team builds a product designed for rapid iteration and decentralised decision-making. Its finance team must ensure spend controls, auditability, and compliance across jurisdictions. Without shared ownership of the underlying systems, neither side can succeed. In this environment, financial control becomes a shared discipline. It requires collaboration on architecture, not just alignment on budgets. Scaling exposes the limits of manual control These challenges often remain hidden until a company begins to scale. Early-stage teams can rely on trust, small numbers, and manual checks. At scale, those approaches break down quickly. As transaction volumes increase, manual reconciliation becomes a bottleneck. As teams expand geographically, local autonomy collides with central oversight. As systems proliferate, the cost of poor integration compounds. What looks like a finance problem on the surface is usually a systems problem underneath. Controls that are not embedded into the technology stack cannot keep pace with modern operating models. This is why many growing companies experience a sudden loss of financial visibility just as they need it most. The tools that worked at one stage of growth are no longer fit for purpose. Where finance-grade compliance meets developer tooling In response, a new category of financial infrastructure is emerging. These platforms are designed to serve both finance and engineering teams, combining regulatory rigour with technical flexibility. Instead of treating financial controls as external constraints, they embed them directly into workflows and systems. Permissions, limits, and reporting are handled programmatically. Data flows in real time. Compliance becomes a property of the infrastructure, not an afterthought. Platforms like Wallester Business illustrate this shift. By offering finance-grade controls through developer-accessible tooling, they reflect a broader trend in how companies approach financial management. The emphasis is no longer on retroactive oversight but on designing control into the system itself. Importantly, this is not about replacing finance expertise with technology. It is about enabling finance teams to operate effectively in a software-driven environment. Financial management is becoming a technology discipline The implications of this shift are clear. Companies that continue to treat financial control as a purely administrative function will struggle to maintain visibility as they scale. Those that recognise it as a technology challenge can design systems that support growth without sacrificing governance. For finance leaders, this means developing a deeper understanding of how tools integrate and data flows. For technology leaders, it means acknowledging that financial constraints are not obstacles to innovation but parameters that must be engineered into the product. The future of financial management does not belong exclusively to CFOs or CTOs. It belongs to organisations that understand that control, compliance, and scalability are now properties of their technology stack. In that sense, financial control has already become a technology problem. The only question is how deliberately companies choose to address it.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation has allocated up to €736 million (DKK 5.5 billion)  to BioInnovation Institute (BII), a leading institute for life science and deep tech innovation in Copenhagen.  The funding will enable BII to expand its activities into new strategic areas and geographies, and support even more entrepreneurs and startups, strengthening innovation in Denmark and Europe. The BioInnovation Institute (BII) accelerates world-class innovation through its programmes: Venture Lab, Bio Studio, and BII Quantum Lab. It supports life science and deep tech startups with access to expertise, networks, infrastructure, and funding of up to €3 million per project and €1.8 million per startup.    The new funding frame runs from 2026 to 2035. Europe faces a critical challenge: Europe produces world-class science, but lacks behind other leading regions in translating discoveries into groundbreaking innovations that create jobs, drive economic growth and address urgent societal challenges. Now, the Novo Nordisk Foundation empowers BII to take a leading role in Europe’s response to pressing issues within human health, planetary health and societal resilience.   With BII’s proven platform that has already helped create and develop more than 130 companies and attracted more than €938 million (DKK 7 billion) in external funding, the aim is to ensure that Denmark’s innovation engine can scale in a way that supports broader European competitiveness. Over the coming years, BII expects to scale its activities by significantly increasing the number of start-ups supported each year. While supporting life science and biotech start-ups will remain key, the new long-term support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation enables BII to venture into new scientific and technological fields, such as AI and quantum. “We are giving BII the opportunity to expand its reach and further strengthen its position as a European powerhouse for innovation. This will prove instrumental in securing that even more science is translated into new companies, jobs and solutions benefitting people and our planet – and ultimately driving the growth and entrepreneurial culture that will benefit European competitiveness,*  says Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. According to Jens Nielsen, CEO of BII, none of this would be possible without the long-term support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which provides exceptional conditions for bringing more scientific breakthroughs to the market to address global challenges: “We have proven that our innovation platform is successful, but we cannot push the boundaries of innovation alone. Strengthening partnerships will remain a top priority as we continue to develop Denmark’s innovation ecosystem and help ensure Europe’s competitiveness.”  BII’s platform has already attracted major commercial and philanthropic partners. Notable collaborations include joint initiatives with Ferring and the Gates Foundation to advance women’s health innovation, and more recent partnerships with the Villum Foundation and the Lundbeck Foundation to support early-stage start-ups in Power-to-X technologies and brain disease treatment. The new funding will further strengthen BII’s position as an attractive destination for investors, enhance its ability to collaborate with academic institutions across Denmark and Europe and support the formation of new partnerships with industry and foundations - all of which are critical elements in sustaining a vibrant innovation ecosystem.

Ghent-based startup Feedelity has raised €510,000 to support its next phase of growth, in an investment round backed by private investors including Gilles Mattelin and Jorn Vanysacker (Henchman), Wouter Fransoo (Delaware), Robbrecht Delrue (Smartendr), and the venture funds Newschool VC and Scalefund. Processing a single customer review takes companies several minutes on average, and hospitality groups with multiple locations may need to manage large volumes of reviews each week. These are spread across platforms such as delivery apps, search engines, email and social media, making it difficult for customer support teams to keep up. At the same time, customer feedback plays a critical role in purchasing decisions, with a significant share of consumers relying on reviews when choosing where to dine. Businesses that actively engage with feedback are therefore better positioned to encourage repeat visits. To address this, Ghent-based entrepreneurs Martin Vander Ghinste (CEO), Achilles Demey (CTO) and Henri Coorevits (CPO) founded the feedback management platform Feedelity. The AI-powered solution centralises feedback from multiple channels, enables semi-automated responses and flags urgent or high-priority issues. It also aggregates review data to provide customer support teams and sales managers with clearer insights into customer behaviour. Henri Coorevits said the platform allows for more personalised customer responses while reducing the workload for support teams, helping them focus on priority feedback and faster follow-up. He added: What makes Feedelity unique is our ability to turn feedback into usable operational data for in-depth analysis. A restaurant chain recently discovered that wooden bowls did not resonate with part of its customers, even though they were more expensive. They were able to act on that insight immediately. Since launching in March 2025, Feedelity has attracted established hospitality brands including Panos, Hawaiian Pokebowl and Pureto, and recently won the top prize at the pitch competition of startup festival Tectonic. Looking ahead, the company plans to expand beyond hospitality into sectors such as multi-location retail and real estate, where feedback is widely collected but often underused. The new funding will support team growth, further product development and expanded marketing efforts as Feedelity scales its platform.

Luna Systems, a leading provider of AI-powered Advanced Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS) for cycling and motorcycles, has secured a €1.5 million investment to bring to market a portfolio of new AI safety camera hardware. Founded in Dublin City University in 2020, and inspired by the safety benefits of automotive ADAS, Luna Systems focuses on accelerating the adoption of similar systems for cycling and motorcycles, where fatalities continue to rise. Luna is a company I’ve been following for several years, and I first encountered them when they were building technology for shared e-scooters. But mobility is an agile sector — and one that demands the ability to pivot. I spoke with CEO Andrew Fleury, and Maria Diviney, COO, to learn about it.  A pivot born from a contracting e-scooter market Initially, Luna put cameras on the front of e-scooters, with a compliance mindset: helping operators win city tenders by demonstrating safer behaviour. Fleury recalled: “We built a strong product and deployed it in around a dozen cities, but only ever at innovation scale. The shared scooter market then contracted, and that demand largely disappeared.” However, they still believed strongly in their tech, so the team asked, where does this really matter?  “That led us to cycling and motorcycling,” shared Fleury.  “The investment we’ve just raised validates that shift and allows us to move from pilots to real-world scale. It lets us bring our first consumer camera to market this year, and that same platform becomes the backbone for our future B2B and OEM integrations.” Fear as the biggest barrier to urban cycling At the mission level, Luna aims to make cycling safer and get more people on bikes. Fleury admits, “I used to think the future of urban transport was self-driving cars. Now I think it’s people cycling. It’s faster, healthier, and more efficient in cities. “ However, he sees fear as the main barrier to getting people on bikes. “Will I be hit by a car or a truck? Six in ten people are still too afraid to cycle in their area. Fear of mixing in traffic is a crucial barrier preventing people from getting on a bike - especially in a busy city.  Technology can help bridge the gap until infrastructure catches up.” Bringing ARAS to e-bikes: From software to full systems According to Fleury, ADAS technology for cars advances daily. “We believe that, just like cars, ARAS will be as commonplace on bikes and motorbikes in the coming years. ARAS can help the bike industry to capture new segments, especially the commuter cycling segment, where the element of fear is highest. In most countries, people will wait years for the perfect cycling infrastructure. Meanwhile, technology is here that can play a huge role to bridge that gap, helping everyone to feel safer as they move through their city.” To date, the company has serviced the market with its advanced Vision AI safety software only. This fresh round of funding accelerates its route to market as a full system provider vastly widening its commercial scope. 2026 product launches include: A dual AI camera system designed for integration by e-bike and motorcycle manufacturers, providing a suite of safety features, including collision warning, blindspot detection, headway monitoring and more, paired with a connected smartphone app for cyclists. Launching later this year, it will be available directly, as well as through selected European distributors. Building on the concept of radar cycling products, Luna’s solution will provide similar in-ride vehicle proximity warnings, but also leverage its AI for intelligent evidence recording as well as post-ride mapping of incidents for blackspot identification.  Fleury explained:  “On the bike, you have a rear-facing camera and an app that gives you real-time situational awareness. The system understands context: when you have plenty of space, vehicles are shown as safe; when things tighten, you get visual and audio warnings so you know you’re in a higher-risk situation, like being passed closely by a bus or truck.” The team also plans to introduce what they call a “reverse blind spot” feature. With both rear- and forward-facing cameras, the system will be able to detect when a cyclist is sitting in a vehicle’s blind spot — one of the most dangerous positions on the road. “For the first consumer product, we’re launching with the rear camera only, because that delivers the most immediate safety value, explained Fleury. “Dual-camera setups will come later, and for OEM-integrated bikes, we expect that to happen sooner.” From raw video to interpreted risk After the ride, you get a post-ride safety analysis. The system automatically detects and tags incidents such as close passes, rear proximity, blind-spot risks, and overtakes in bike lanes.  You can review exactly where and when you were exposed to danger.  “It’s not just recording video,” asserts Fleury  “it’s interpreting it.” The software blurs faces and licence plates for privacy, and everything is processed with that in mind. AI at the edge on two wheels I was curious why this tech hasn’t become a standard safety feature in connected e-bikes the way it has in cars. Fleury cites cost and complexity are big factors, but also context.  “Radar systems exist, but in cities they’re too noisy — there’s always a car behind you. They don’t understand lanes, relative motion, or whether something is actually dangerous. Vision does. From a hardware perspective, it’s also hard." He explained that on an e-bike, you have very limited space, power, and cooling. “The chips have to be low-power, low-cost, and capable of running advanced AI in real time. That’s only now becoming possible.” “Almost like starting again”   Pivoting from scooters to consumer cycling and OEM partnerships is a big shift. I wanted to understand how difficult it was in practice. Fleury admits, “it was almost like starting again. The core technology is related, but the AI models are much more complex, and the automotive and two-wheel OEM world operates very differently.  “The sales cycles are long, the validation processes are heavy, and the culture is cautious. We had to learn the language, the standards, and the way decisions are made. And globally, the market is changing fast: Chinese manufacturers operate at a very different pace than traditional European OEMs. It’s been a steep learning curve, but also extremely energising.” The company opted for a direct-to-consumer launch first rather than going straight to manufacturers because, according to  Diviney, OEM lead times are simply too long.  “To build a great product and a credible brand, we need real-world usage, feedback, and iteration. Selling to cyclists directly allows us to validate the technology at scale, refine the user experience, and build a safety record. Those learnings then become incredibly valuable when we integrate with bike and motorcycle manufacturers. It’s the same path companies like Mobileye took in automotive: prove it in the aftermarket first, then become a standard feature.” Targeting commuters, enthusiasts, and cargo bikes as the first ARAS adopters The company is initially targeting enthusiast and commuter cyclists — people who ride regularly and already invest in their safety. Cargo bikes are also a key segment.  “From there, we’ll broaden as the product matures,” explained Diviney.    The late seed round was led by cycling-focused VC firm Fundracer Capital and EIT Urban Mobility, and supported by Enterprise Ireland. According to Fleury this funding enables the team to accelerate our hardware development and push on with our mission.   "We are extremely grateful to all of our shareholders and honoured that Fundracer has come on board. Each of the Fundracer team members has made an incredible contribution to the industry, and we are thankful to be able to benefit from their guidance. We are equally appreciative to EIT Urban Mobility and Enterprise Ireland for their continued support and trust”.  Fundracer, founded in the Netherlands, is led by industry-renowned cycling entrepreneurs, René Wiertz (Founder, 3T Cycling), Gerard Vroomen (Founder, Cervélo), and Andy Ording (Founder, Zipp Wheels). The firm invests in emerging technologies with a focus on safety, efficiency, and innovation. Its portfolio includes Specter, Blubrake, and Litelok, reflecting Fundracer’s commitment to advancing the next generation of cycling and mobility solutions. René Wiertz, Founder and Managing Partner at Fundracer Capital, believes that Luna’s technology and philosophy exactly align with their vision: "To date, high-level innovation has focused significantly on supporting the needs of professional and experienced cyclists, but to support the industry’s growth as a whole, everyone needs to feel safe navigating busy urban environments."  He asserts that while radar solutions have captured market attention over the past decade, AI advancements make vision a better choice from our perspective. "Vision AI doesn’t just detect. Its data capture capabilities help identify risk blackspots resulting from unsuitable cycling infrastructure, empowering cyclists to map safer routes." According to Peter Vest, Investment & Portfolio Manager at EIT Urban Mobility: “We are proud to continue supporting Luna, a company that embodies EIT Urban Mobility’s mission to make urban mobility safer. We are equally delighted to welcome Fundracer, whose deep expertise in the cycling industry brings invaluable insight. With both investors actively engaged in advancing mobility innovation, I am confident we can help Luna scale across Europe and beyond to make cycling more accessible for all.” The additional funding from Enterprise Ireland, the Irish government agency responsible for supporting innovation and scaling Irish businesses globally, underscores national support for Luna’s growth and international ambition.

Munich-based startup lytra has completed its pre-seed financing round, led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) with participation from additional investors, to expand its AI-driven platform for manufacturing service automation. Service operations represent a significant strategic opportunity for manufacturing companies, accounting for a substantial share of revenue and typically delivering higher margins than new equipment sales. At the same time, increasing machine complexity and rising customer expectations are making effective service delivery more critical. Unlocking this long-term potential requires scalable processes and the efficient use of existing product and process knowledge, a challenge further intensified by ongoing skills shortages. Lytra addresses these needs with an industry-specific AI operating system designed for manufacturing service operations. The platform integrates multiple AI agents that automate core service processes such as spare parts ordering, technician scheduling, and technical support. Built on existing domain expertise and fully integrated into customers’ IT environments, the system is operational from day one. This enables service teams to focus on complex cases while significantly reducing response times and operational workloads. According to Timo Bertsch, Investment Manager at HTGF, after-sales service remains one of the largest untapped sources of value in manufacturing. He adds that lytra addresses this structural challenge with a strong focus on automation, scalability, and the preservation of expert knowledge through AI. As an industrial technology company, lytra supports mechanical engineering firms in transforming after-sales service into a scalable revenue driver by automating service request handling across a single, integrated platform. The company plans to use the new funding to further develop its platform and expand its customer base among mid-sized manufacturing companies in 2026, building on the results of its initial pilot projects.

London-based Cyb3r Operations has raised £4 million to provide organisations with continuous visibility into third-party cyber risk. The round was led by Octopus Ventures, with follow-on investment from Pi Labs, bringing total funding to £5 million. As organisations increasingly depend on expanding networks of SaaS platforms, cloud services, AI tools and external suppliers, cyber risk is becoming more distributed and harder to control. More than a third of major cyber incidents now involve third parties, yet many companies continue to rely on periodic questionnaires, spreadsheets and static audits that fail to reflect how risk evolves in real time. Cyb3r Operations was founded to address this challenge by replacing fragmented, manual processes with continuous, automated oversight integrated across an organisation’s technology environment. The company works with large enterprises to identify and monitor third-party cyber risks across their supply chains on an ongoing basis. Rather than producing abstract risk metrics with limited operational value, the platform highlights the most critical external relationships, tracks how risk changes over time, prioritises response actions and supports organisational resilience. It also surfaces vulnerabilities across third-party ecosystems, including compliance gaps, shadow IT, extended supply-chain exposures and other risks often missed by traditional point-in-time assessments. Commenting on the company’s mission, Vincent Cook, founder and CEO of Cyb3r Operations, said many of today’s cybersecurity challenges stem not only from increasingly sophisticated threats, but also from internal processes that prevent organisations from clearly understanding where risk sits. He added that effective risk management requires continuous detection, assessment and response as relationships and dependencies evolve. The funding will support platform expansion, further development of threat intelligence capabilities, and broader adoption by organisations managing third-party and supply-chain cyber risk.

Helsinki-based product growth automation platform Skene has closed a €800,000 pre-seed round led by Superhero Capital, with participation from NVIDIA executives. As AI accelerates the pace of software development, a widening gap has emerged between building products and achieving commercial success. Many startups struggle to reach market fit, while a significant portion of SaaS tools remain underused. This execution gap leads to substantial wasted investment each year. In response, companies often expand sales and customer success teams, which can mask a product’s underlying ability to drive growth on its own. Skene was founded to address this challenge. The company has developed an AI agent that analyses a product’s source code to understand its logic, structure, and intended use, and then generates continuously updated user guidance integrated into everyday tools and workflows. By helping users realise value more quickly, Skene supports higher adoption, broader product usage, and stronger retention throughout the user lifecycle. Skene positions its platform as an autonomous value layer for SaaS products. Its AI agents read software codebases to deliver personalised, outcome-driven customer success at scale, automating key growth functions such as onboarding, adoption, and retention. According to CEO Teemu Kinos, many established products still rely heavily on sales teams, customer support, and manual workflows to execute growth strategies, while remaining cautious about adopting scalable AI-based solutions. He adds: The opportunity for exponential product-led growth is in the hands of AI-native teams looking for ways to ship at a speed and scale manual growth strategies can’t match. Skene automates the path to growth at every step, continuously improving user outcomes with every release. Skene has already launched its first agent and plans to expand coverage across the full product growth loop by early 2026. The company intends to use the new funding to surpass €1 million in ARR and broaden its platform to support growth across the entire user journey by spring 2026.

German startup osapiens, which provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) services to help companies meet ESG targets, says it has become a unicorn after raising $100m. The Series C round was funded solely by Decarbonization Partners, the joint venture between BlackRock and Temasek focused on late-stage VC investing in decarbonising tech. The company is now valued at over $1.1bn, following this round, it said. The Mannheim-headquartered firm has previously raised $147m with Goldman Sachs and German VC Armira Growth previous investors. Osapiens provides enterprise software that helps companies manage regulatory compliance and sustainability across their businesses on a single platform. Its customers include Tesco and packaging company DS Smith. It employs around 500 people and has a presence in markets including Germany, France, Spain, UK and the US. The company says it will use the proceeds to speed up product innovation and fuel growth in existing and new international markets. Alberto Zamora, co-CEO and co-founder of osapiens, said: “This investment is a strong validation of our strategy and our long-term vision. It demonstrates that sustainable growth and AI-driven efficiency remain top priorities for global investors. Decarbonization Partners is an exceptional partner for us. “With a focus on sustainability and the combined global presence and investment expertise of BlackRock and Temasek, they bring exactly the perspective and scale we need for our next phase of growth to become the indisputable global category leader in sustainable growth for enterprises of all sizes.”  Matthias Jungblut, co-CEO and co-founder, osapiens, said: “Decarbonization Partners understands both the regulatory dynamics companies face today and the business opportunity of AI-drivenefficiency that comes with it. “Their deep experience in scaling category-defining technology companies makes them a perfect strategic fit alongside Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Armira Growth.”

Belgian cybersecurity company A‍ikido has raised a $60M millionSeries B at a $1B valuation, led by Tom Stafford at DST Global, with participation from PSG Equity, Singular, Notion Capital, and others. Aikido is one of the fastest cybersecurity companies to reach unicorn status — in just three years — globally, and according to the company, the fastest ever in Europe. Aikido’s Series B follows a year of rapid growth for the company, including five-times revenue growth and nearly three-times customer growth. Aikido is now the fastest-ever European cybersecurity company to reach unicorn status, reflecting this growing demand for security systems that can operate effectively as software development accelerates. Aikido is a developer-first cybersecurity platform that helps software teams find, prioritise, and fix security issues across their entire software stack — from code to cloud and runtime — in a unified, automated way. Built by developers, for developers According to a blogpost written by CGO Madeleine Lawrence, “We didn’t start Aikido because we thought the world needed another security product. We started it because we were developers ourselves, and we were tired of security being something that happened to us instead of something that helped us.  We were tired of tools that created noise instead of clarity, complexity instead of progress, and process instead of outcomes. As Willem reminds us every day, “Developers just want to get back to building fun features.” But too often, they can’t. Instead, they’re forced to wade through a haystack of alerts, dashboards that look like the inside of an F-16 cockpit, and a barrage of four-letter acronyms developers are somehow expected to care about. “ She contends that somewhere along the way, security drifted away from how software is actually built and operated – “abstracted into quadrants, point tools, and snapshot reports that live far outside the reality of modern engineering teams.” “That disconnect is the real problem. Today, organisations spend billions on disjointed products that can’t talk to each other. Risk correlation becomes impossible; noise becomes the only consistent outcome. As vendors and analysts chase the next four-letter acronym, vulnerabilities that matter slip by unpatched or unseen entirely.”‍ Aikido is built around the premise that security begins and ends with better engineering. That requires a single, unified platform to secure the entire software lifecycle — built for the people who actually ship software. Instead of fragmenting security across five vendors, Aikido brings code, supply chain, cloud, runtime, and testing together so teams can answer one core question: “Are we actually at risk?” Detection alone, however, is not enough. “The magic comes when we close the loop,” Lawrence writes. With full code and application context, Aikido automatically triages and remediates issues from the moment vulnerabilities are introduced through to discovery in production, turning security from a reporting function into an engineering system. Software is being built at a pace that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago. AI-generated code is now the norm, and autonomous agents are writing and modifying systems faster than humans can review them. As engineering evolves, she argues, security must evolve with it. Towards self-securing software The next chapter, according to Lawrence, is “self-securing software” — systems that can secure themselves on demand. Aikido has launched Aikido Attack, an AI-driven penetration testing capability designed to deliver “hacker creativity at machine speed.” The system deploys hundreds of specialised agents to hunt vulnerabilities, validate exploits, and provide built-in remediation and retesting to ensure fixes hold — all observable in real time. Over time, this will evolve into continuous, autonomous testing embedded directly into every feature release. The goal is to close the ship-test-fix loop and return developers’ focus to building, not firefighting. Today, Aikido is used by more than 100,000 teams worldwide, including organisations such as the Premier League, SoundCloud, Niantic, and Revolut. Over the past year, the company has grown revenue fivefold and more than tripled its customer base. Proof Europe can build and scale world-class software Lawrence contends that in an industry long dominated by US and Israeli heavyweights, Aikido’s rise demonstrates that Europe can build and scale a world-class software security company on the global stage. “Everything about Aikido shouldn’t have worked. A European team, based in a village, with no traditional cybersecurity pedigree, no CISO network, and a bottom-up, developer-led go-to-market strategy." But that outsider position became an advantage. With no established network to sell into, the company had to grow inbound. With limited budget and powerful incumbents, it had to counter-position sharply. With a freemium, developer-first model, it had to deliver real value every day or fail. Internally, that mindset is reflected in a team of 180 people, including more than 21 former founders, shipping over 60 deployments a day. This next phase is backed by continued support from existing investors including Notion Capital, Singular.vc, Syndicate One, Entourage, Connect Ventures, and Innovia Capital, alongside early individual backers such as Christina Cacioppo (Vanta), Gilles Mattelin and Jorn Vanysacker (Henchman), Pieterjan Bouten (Showpad, Entourage), Louis Jonckheere (Wintercircus, Showpad), and Matthias Geeroms (Lighthouse). Aikido has also welcomed new investors for this chapter, including Mark Coucke and Alychlo, Joris Van Der Gucht (Silverfin), Ian Thiel (Sublime Security), Lorenz Bogaert (StarApps), Hendrik Isebaert (Showpad), Nik Storonsky (Revolut), VDK Bank, Dovesco, and PSG Equity.

Three-quarters of UK fintech founders are using AI to identify candidates and speed up recruitment, says a new survey. But findings from the survey also show that human judgment remains critical to ensure founders are finding the right talent and mix of individuals to recruit. The survey gauged the opinions of early-stage fintech founders, with 45 founders responding to the survey, within which the survey spoke to six founders in depth on an array of questions, on areas such as recruitment, culture and leadership.These were founders from insurtech Loxa, data platform Hace, money management startup Munny, property tech firm Grand Bequest, financial planning AI assistant PlannerPal, and gifting platform GiftRound.The survey found that founders were curious enough to dip their toes into using AI-powered assistants and talent-matching platforms but were not ready to commit.Mark Whitcroft, CEO, co-founder, PlannerPal, said: “We’re trying AI-first hiring platforms, ike Cord and Jack & Jill,  to improve funnel speed at a fraction of recruiter cost.”Andy Lang, CEO, Munny, said: "I’m not from a technical background—an AI assistant helps describe the role we need.”Katherine Gunderson, CEO and founder, Grand Bequest, said: “We’ve opened an Asana ‘R&D opportunities’ board to universities to surface candidates."Gunderson added: "Onboarding still takes 8–10 weeks. That’s too long. I want tools and mechanisms to operationalise faster.” Other findings include that a company’s purpose is crucial in driving hiring and retention, with 21 per cent of new hires stating they joined a firm specifically for its purpose, while over half (53 per cent) said they would stay because of it. The report was compiled by Ninety Two Ventures, the advisory firm, media consultant Sam Shaw, accountancy firm EY and fintech trade body Innovate Finance.  IMAGE: PIXABAY

Automation platform creator Cast AI has announced an investment from Pacific Alliance Ventures (PAV), the US-based corporate venture arm of Shinsegae Group, an over $50 billion Korean conglomerate with leading businesses across retail, consumer, and digital platforms.  With this round of funding, Cast AI’s valuation exceeds $1 billion, marking the company as Lithuania’s 5th unicorn.  Unlike traditional solutions that merely monitor clusters and provide recommendations, Cast AI leverages advanced machine learning algorithms to continuously analyse and automatically optimise clusters in real-time, cutting cloud costs, improving application performance, and boosting DevOps efficiency. “Shinsegae Group’s investment, and our over one billion dollar valuation, underscore the market’s confidence in our platform vision and our ability to execute it globally,” said Cast AI Co-Founder and CEO Yuri Frayman. “Enterprises don’t just need cheaper infrastructure – they need infrastructure that adapts automatically as workloads and constraints change. That is what our automation agents were built to do, and this investment helps us scale that globally.” Cast AI also expands its platform with the introduction of OMNI Compute, which connects external capacity, including GPUs, as native compute, allowing workloads to run on the most appropriate resources, locally or across clouds, without code changes, reconfiguration, or operational changes. It enables organisations to run any workloads, starting with AI inference, without cloud lock-in, while maintaining control over where they execute, to meet compliance and regulatory requirements. Teams can scale services without pinning workloads to a single region or provider, while keeping infrastructure behaviour automated, governed, and predictable as demand increases.  It applies the same optimisation used across the Cast AI platform to this external capacity, including GPU sharing, monitoring, and rightsizing, ensuring AI workloads remain efficient and consistent at scale. “OMNI Compute makes GPUs fungible at the infrastructure layer so capacity isn’t trapped inside a single cloud or region,” said Cast AI President and Co-Founder Laurent Gil. “Teams can move, allocate, and run production workloads wherever compute is actually available, with control over cost and performance.” Global expansion has been a core pillar of Cast AI’s growth strategy following its Series C funding round. Since then, the company has significantly expanded its regional footprint by opening new offices in Bangalore, London, New York, and Tel Aviv, as well as subsidiaries in Canada, France, India, Korea, Lithuania, Singapore, and the UK. “Cast AI has built a category-defining automation platform that aligns with the needs of modern, cloud-first enterprises,” said Hyuk Jin Chung, Managing Partner at PAV. “We see strong demand for the company’s platform globally, and we’re excited to support the company’s continued expansion in Asia and help it realise its long-term Application Performance Automation platform vision.” “With Cast AI, we’ve automated continuous infrastructure optimisation on Amazon EKS – reducing operational overhead while improving application efficiency and cost control in real time,” said Kyotack Tylor Kim, Head of Next Gen Cloud Group at Samsung Electronics. “OMNI Compute’s unified control plane has the potential to change how enterprises like Samsung run AI infrastructure globally.”

Klarna is launching a service which allows its customers to send money to each other through its app, as it continues its shift to reposition itself as a bank. The Swedish fintech, best known as a BNPL fintech, is launching peer-to-peer payments across 13 European countries, including the UK. The feature means that Klarna customers can send money to other registered Klarna customers, such as splitting bills or gifting cash with friends and family, directly from the Klarna app. Klarna customers will have to have the required funds in their Klarna wallet to send the money. To send money, users choose a recipient using a phone number, email address, QR code, or a saved contact. After confirming the amount, Klarna runs fraud and eligibility checks before proceeding with the payment. Klarna, which has over 100m users globally, hopes to broaden the service to non-Klarna customers and cross-border payments. The launch forms part of a move by Klarna to reposition itself as a digital bank and shed its BNPL image. It has launched a debit card, which it says has registered four million sign-ups in four months and has bagged an Electronic Money Licence in the UK. Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna, said: “Customers are sick of the friction and fees of traditional banking, which is why millions signed up to Klarna Card within a few months of launch. "With peer-to-peer payments we’re making it even easier to manage all of your payments through Klarna, now including small transfers, making managing your money quicker, easier, and cheaper.” Siemiatkowski yesterday told Bloomberg that Americans are being ripped off by high credit card fees, amid President Trump’s calls for a one-year 10 per cent cap on credit card interest rates.